adrianmott.com

Google this week has been putting on their popular Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco with oodles of speakers and industry folks.  Apparently though, word just came out of the conference that the host company has decided to give everyone in the audience a free Android phone.  This of course resembled the infamous Oprah moment back in 2004 when at the start of her 19th season on-air, Oprah gave away 276 free Pontiacs (yes, the car) to her audience members

The exact number of free phones Google just handed out isn’t clear, but estimates are in the 4,000 range.  These phones weren’t the old G1 phones either, these were the new HTC Magic (G2) phones that are due out in stores soon.

This giveaway strategically coincided with the launch of the Android ‘developer challenge’ which gives cash and incentives to the developers of the best apps on Android.  This of course is a play to steer developers away from iPhone development.  It certainly will be interesting to see if Google and Android can steer market share away from the iPhone, but the simple fact that the operating system is open source means that the line of G phones could become the phone choice for developers everywhere.